All Stories by Emily Conover
- Materials Science
‘Smart’ pasta morphs into fun shapes as it cooks
The trick to this shape-shifting are grooves cut into the raw pasta. Those grooves affect how the noodles swell as they cook.
- Space
Here’s why people picked certain stars as constellations
Patterns of human eye movement help explain why particular sets of stars form iconic shapes, a high school student showed.
- Chemistry
Extreme pressure? Diamonds can take it
Diamond retains its structure even at extreme pressures, which could reveal how carbon behaves in the cores of some exoplanets.
- Tech
A robot made with a Venus flytrap can grab fragile objects
Scientists have “borrowed” the hair-trigger leaves of Venus flytraps to make a gentle grabber that can be controlled by a cellphone app.
- Physics
2020 Physics Nobel goes for delving into black holes
Although Einstein’s general theory of relative suggested black holes might exist, this year’s winner’s helped show they actually are out there.
- Physics
The exotic ‘atom’ positronium surprises scientists
New measurements of a weird but simple atom, one without a nucleus, suggest it may have unexpected properties. Scientists find this troubling.
- Physics
Could ripples in spacetime point to wormholes?
A new calculation reveals that strange gravitational waves detected by LIGO and Virgo could see if a black hole were falling into a hypothetical tunnel in spacetime.
- Physics
Flying snakes wriggle their way through the air
Flying snakes go tens of meters (yards) without wings. They do it by undulating back and forth and up and down, a new study shows.
- Space
Spotted: Milky Way’s giant gas bubbles in visible light
The bubbles have different colors, based on how the gas inside them moves. That could give clues to how the bubbles developed.
- Physics
Physicists foil classic oobleck science trick
Cornstarch and water — best known as oobleck — solidifies upon impact. Researchers used a new technique to make it stay liquid.
- Physics
Soap bubbles’ ‘pop’ reveals the physics of the bursts
A bubble’s pop is a quiet, high-pitched noise. This can reveal the forces that occur during the bubble’s demise.
- Physics
There’s science to making great fried rice
Scientists report finding the physics that seems to explain how chefs can quickly fry rice over a hot flame without burning the food.
